HOSTELHOSTEL 2
GIGLI
HOWARD THE DUCK
BATTLEFIELD EARTH
CATWOMAN
WITLESS PROTECTION
SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS
AN ALAN SMITHEE FILM: BURN HOLLYWOOD BURN
KAZAAM
STAYING ALIVE
NORTH
JUDGE DREDD
THE 13TH WARRIOR
TREASURE PLANET
GODS AND GENERALS
SAHARA
STEALTH
ZYZZYX ROAD
GLITTER
FROM JUSTIN TO KELLY
LEONARD PART 6
FREDDY GETS FINGERED
DISASTER MOVIE
MIXED NUTS
MYRA BRECKINRIDGE
THE CONQUEROR
All ABOUT STEVE
DADDY DAY CARE
MISS MARCH
CODE NAME: THE CLEANER
YU-GI-OH: THE MOVIE
THE HOTTIE & THE NOTTIE
CORKY ROMANO
THE ADVENTURES OF PLUTO NASH
LARRY THE CABLE GUY: HEALTH INSPECTOR
WHITEOUT
THE POSTMAN
BALLISTIC: ECKS VS. SEVER
SHOWGIRLS
STRIPTEASE
MAC AND ME
SWEPT AWAY
BOXING HELENA
OSMOSIS JONES
MONKEYBONE
CUTTHROAT ISLAND
TOWN AND COUNTRY
CAN'T STOP THE MUSIC
THE FOUNTAIN
SUPER BABIES: BABY GENIUSES 2
LOST HORIZONS
AT LONG LAST LOVE
YES, GIORGIO
SON OF THE MASK
BASIC INSTINCT 2
DUCK YOU SUCKER
and anything with Pauley Shore
It opens today.
YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!!!!!
43 comments :
The 13th Warrior is pretty good, for what it is.
I did note that "The Complete AfterM*A*S*H" was not on the list, though...
vw: ingst. Introspective feeling of the man searching for the six-fingered man.
We are going to the cinema today, so thank you for the warning. Several movies on that list still make me curse at lost hours that I shall never get back
Great list. I wish I could say that I have seen none of the movies on that list, but I did sit through Catwoman, Hostel, and the first half hour of Ecks vs Sever.
I would add Titanic and Gangs of New York to the top of that list.
In Google Reader, this post (three lines' worth of all-caps movie titles, no line breaks) looked like the weirdest telegram ever sent.
Showgirls wasn't a good movie, but as a T&A extravaganza it was top notch.
"Duck, You Sucker" is a terrific spaghetti western directed by Sergio Leone, starring Rod Steiger and James Coburn. It's sometimes titled "A Fistful of Dynamite" to emphasize its ties to Leone's other terrific movies. I can't imagine what it's doing on this list.
With that out of the way, I have to admit that I enjoy at least five other movies on this list.
Also missing from the list but fully deserving of inclusion:
TOYS
Saw a screener of "IT'S COMPLICATED" last week...
...and can only say your list is generous.
Just saw Avitar. How does Cameron get away with it! As a writer, he's a hack. First there was "Titanic (the love story)" easily the worst movie to win an Oscar. Now Avitar, the plot and dialog are beyond dumb. Full of clichés from every B Western, bad war movie or wild native saga. Sure the special effect are nice, but can't compare to the first "Star Wars" (and it wasn't even 3-D).
WV: cleetr - you make one up!
Freddy Got Fingered is one of the most important films ever made.
I didn't think The Fountain was that bad. but it did fail at what it tried to accomplish. The comic, written by the director, was excellent. He wants to have it remade properly.
No mention of Batman & Robin, or the Matrix sequels?
So... not as bad as Ishtar. Hmm. I smell Oscar!
Gee, now I really want to see a list of the movies you'd see AFTER "It's Complicated"
Oh, and to the anon poster in regards to Avatar - a filmmaker can get away with lots if they have a (I'm guessing) 2 million dollar budget to pay critics and film blogs to shill the heck out of it.
I don't get the IT'S COMPLICATED hate. It looks amusing. The reviews I've seen/read have been middling but positive. I'm curious to see how Alec Baldwin looks naked now. I like the idea of a romantic comedy about people my own age. I'd say I would see it before any of those films except that I have already seen:
HOWARD THE DUCK (truly terrible)
SANTA CLAUSE CONQUERS THE MARTIANS (has to be seen once to be believed. And it's Pia Zadora's finest film work)
THE 13th WARRIOR (which wasn't bad. The book - yes I read the book, which is titled EATERS OF THE DEAD - was better.)
FROM JUSTIN TO KELLY (on TV, with the sound OFF. All the beach bodies were lovely to look at, as long as you didn't listen to it)
MYRA BRECKENRIDGE (I have the DVD, because, ghastly as it is, it's always entertained me. And it's certainly better than Mae West's final movie, SEXTETTE. The novel is one of my favorites. Vidal claims never to have seen it. Poor Gore, since his name is linked to CALIGULA also, two of the most awful movies of the 1970s.)
MONKEYBONE (Brendan, dear Brendan, why did you do that to me?)
CAN'T STOP THE MUSIC (God help me, I've seen it at least three times. Now it exists solely to prove that, once upon a time, Bruce Jenner was really good looking, not the grotesque thing with the butchered face he is these days on that Khardashian TV show. When the film came out, a comedy troupe I was in used to do a parody of it in our act that I co-wrote, called "Can't Stand The Music.")
"LOST HORIZONS" [sic] (Do you mean both versions of LOST HORIZON? Because I just watched the Capra version again last week, and it's not bad, albeit still infected with James Hilton's stupid philosophical ideas. Pauline Kael described Shangri-La as a place where people would spend centuries just puttering around. The musical remake is, of course, atrocious, and I have seen both. Poor Sir John Guilgud. And he's in CALIGULA too.)
PS. The movie I'm dreading seeing, and I will have to see it, is SHERLOCK HOLMES. As a lifelong devotee of Holmes, someone who has read ALL the original stories at least twice each, and many, many of them many, many times, as someone who was made a lifelong member of THE BAKER STREET IRREGULARS over 30 years ago, the idea of turning Sherlock Holmes into a cross between James Bond and Indiana Jones, and having him played by an actor who is too short, too handsome, and TOO AMERICAN, fills me with horror. Hearing the director saying they were going to"Take the Victorian fuddy-duddiness out of Sherlock Holmes" set my teeth on edge. (Whatever the Holmes stories are, they are NOT "fuddy-duddy,") Jude Law, much as I love him, is about as believable for an army doctor and veteran of a war in Afghanistan as I would be. Holmes stories aren't about action; they're about being smart, and figuring things out. That's probably part of why I fell in love with them back when I was 10. They were about a guy who triumphed because he was smarted than thte strong boys. (That he lived with his male lover became part of the appeal for me only after pubverty.)
And much as I love male pulchritude, a shirtless Sherlock Holmes showing off the pecs and abs is bizarre to say the least. Why on earth didn't Basil Rathbone and Jeremmy Brett go shirtless as Sherlock?
Jeremy Brett did Holmes to PERFECTION. Frankly, they don't need re-doing, and certainly don't need to be "fixed" by a man who thinks he knows what's wrong with them (nothing is wrong with them), and yet who has shown the utter lack of taste to have once married Madonna.
Did You Hear About The (reviews for the) Morgans?
I love the quote on the IT'S COMPLICATED TV ad (though who it's quoting is in such small print you can't tell who supposedly said it) claiming that it's hard to find any films that are funnier than It's Complicated. Man, I guess we should just start destroying thousands of movie comedies made for nearly 100 years because surely they have nothing on Nancy Meyers. Billy Wilder! What a hack! The Marx Brothers? Who the hell were they? W.C. Fields? Fughedabouthim. Preston Sturges? Chaplin? Keaton? Mae West? Oh so old. Of more recent vintage. I bet no one laughed as much at films such as Flirting With Disaster or The 40 Year Old Virgin or Young Frankenstein or Blazing Saddles or Airplane! or The Player of even South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut. They may as well stop making comedies now. Nancy Meyers has perfected the genre!
Steve Martin: "Uh oh...not a great time to be feelin' groovy."
C'mon, that line's destined to be a classic! You writer-y people are soooooo picky.
Anon 1:05, perhaps you should check out Av-A-tar, instead.
Like some others, I would not have The 13th Warrior on this list. It wasn't big budget and it's a thoroughly enjoyable action flick with the side benefit of the lovely Diane Venora.
You're better off with "Ishtar," a film that has some funny moments but eventually gets dwarfed by its ambition. if it had been shot on the back lot and starred Charles Grodin and John Candy it would have been as big as "Airplane!"
I am getting tired of Nancy Myers' science-fiction movies where a 50-something womanizer dumps his hot trophy wife/girlfriend/whatever for a menopausal crone (Diane Keaton used to be hot, I'll give you that, but "Annie Hall" was THIRTY FREAKIN' YEARS AGO), a man-bites-dog scenario that only happens in Nancy Myers' fevered imagination and her movies.
Any relation between Myers' fanciful scenarios and real life is certainly not mirrored in her Wikipedia entry, which claims that "She has been separated from husband Charles Shyer since 1999."
Shyer's Wikipedia bio says that "He married Deborah Lynn in 2004. They have two children."
This is beginning to remind me of the residual creepiness of Jimmy Stewart's makeover of Kim Novak in "Vertigo," even though Hitchcock's shenanigans with his actresses really happened -- and Myers' ass-backwards fantasies never have and never will.
I will be willingly seeing It's Complicated. Probably not in the theater. I will see it to watch Streep perform her magic. I always watch her movies.
____
I am truly amazed at how many people can't spell a simple 6-letter word that they have seen many times in large letters. It's "Avatar".
You're not talking about Humphrey Bogart's SAHARA, are you?
Aren't the lead female characters in Nancy Myers movies just big-budget Mary Sues?
Just wondering: Where does any Kate Hudson movie post-Almost Famous rate with you compared to The Movie Whose Title Is Inspired By Denise Richards' Reality Show?
Ishtar, Hudson Hawk and Last Action Hero are films whose reputations are worse than the films themselves. This isn't to say they are good movies, just that they all got prejudged by their excessive budgets instead of what was on the screen. In fact, Last Action Hero is almost a good satire.
"Tod Hunter said...
I am getting tired of Nancy Myers' science-fiction movies where a 50-something womanizer dumps his hot trophy wife/girlfriend/whatever for a menopausal crone "
Meryl Streep, who is 60, is your idea of a "Crone"? Yikes! I think most women her age would kill to look as great as she does, and a lot of women younger than she is as well. Why is the "50-something womanizer" not a male crone?
Just so we're clear on everyone's ages, Alec Baldwin is 51, a full 9 years younger than Meryl. Steve Martin is the oldest of the trio; he's 64. What a crone he is.
Yes, Nancy makes soft-core, middle-aged woman-porn, in which gorgeous middle-aged women who live in baronial splendor find men desire them. Her target audience is middle-aged women. Lots of movies about elderly men who find "True Love" with ridiculously younger women. Woody Allen is a big offender there. Every old man wants to be Michael Douglas. It's harmless. If the films amuse you, see them. If they don't, catch ISHTAR. I'm not tired of them, because I've simply never bother ed to see any, though I will rent this one when it hits DVD.
But there are plenty of men at every adult age who wouldn't say no to Meryl Streep.
And for the record, at age 50, my devilishly handsome uncle divorced his psychotic trophy wife, and remarried the mother of his children, and remained married to her until he died, in his 80s. It does happen.
I'm a middle-aged woman, so I HAVE TO see it. It's in the contract.
Have a date to go tomorrow. I'll let you know what I think ...
I...I liked Mixed Nuts. Oddly enough, our local NBC affiliate pre-empted the network lineup to run it last night (12/26).
WV: hesseshe - the plot of Victor/Victoria described by someone who mumbles.
D. McEwan:
Holmes stories aren't about action; they're about being smart, and figuring things out.
But there were action in Conan Doyle's stories: a boat chase in The Sign of Four, and a fight to the death with Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls, for example.
on topic: I haven't seen "It's Complicated", and it might not be good, but Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin should at least make it more watchable than 99% of the movies on that list.
You failed to mention "Lambada!" as well as "Lambada, The Forbidden Dance" (aka "The Forbidden Dance") the only 2 all-lambada musicals ever released, which just happened to be released on the same day.
Also any of the hilarious Sylvester Stallone comedy classics of the 1980's (Rhinestone, Oscar, Stop Or My Mom Will Shoot.
Just sayin...
"Tomas said...
D. McEwan:
But there were action in Conan Doyle's stories: a boat chase in The Sign of Four, and a fight to the death with Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls, for example."
I never said there was NO action in the stories. I said they were not ABOUT action. I am well aware of the boat chase in SIGN OF FOUR, particularly as I just rewatched the Jeremy Brett version of it the day before Christmas. (It is, however, a chase between boats not going terribly fast, as opposed to a James Bond speed boat, cut-across-land, make-impossible-manuevers, action sequence.) The fight to the death with Moriarty in THE FINAL PROBLEM takes place off stage, so to speak. Watson doesn't witness it. He merely imagines what happened in his absence, and he imagines it wrong, as he learns in THE ADVENTURE OF THE EMPTY HOUSE. (Which was written ten years alter. What a LONG time to wait to resolve a cliffhanger!) There is a bit of action, about one page's worth, at the climax of THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES, but the story works well enough that there are DVDs of no less than four differernt versions on my shelves, and I haven't anywhere near all the film versions of it. There are a few fist fights here and there in the stories, always short, a few chases, which never involve avoiding being flattened under a falling ship, or dangling from half-constructed bridges. Holmes was a fencer, though his biggest sword battle, with a villain on top of a speeding train, comes not from a Doyle story, but from the decidedly revisionist (but wittily so) THE SEVEN PERCENT SOLUTION by Nicholas Meyer, the director of Ken's VOLUNTEERS.
There is comedy in some of them, but they're not about comedy. There is pathos in some of them, but they're not about pathos. There are moral lessons in some, but they're not about moral lessons. There's some romance in a couple of them (THE SIGN OF FOUR for example), but boy oh boy, are they not about romance.
I still haven't seen the new movie (busy and post-Christmas broke), but I had an email last night from a friend who has. He wrote "Sherlock Holmes is appalling. Do yourself a favor. Give it a wide berth." The initials of the person who wrote that email are KL, and you've read his blog.
My review of SHERLOCK HOLMES arrives Monday night.
I never said there was NO action in the stories. I said they were not ABOUT action.
Good point. Since I haven't seen the movie yet, I don't know if it is ABOUT action. But the fact that it includes action does not separate it from the original stories.
The movie might include action, comedy, pathos, and romance. For me, this does not make it a bad film. Even if the film contradicts canon I would not automatically dismiss it. After all, The Adventure of the Empty House is a clear case of retcon (also a case of anachronism, since Holmes uses a fighting style that wasn't invented yet, but that's another point...)
If there are liberties taken in the new Sherlock Holmes movie, I will be happy to accept them as long as the result is a good movie. After all, Doyle took a few liberties himself in his writings.
Also:
Why on earth didn't Basil Rathbone ... go shirtless as Sherlock?
I don't know, but at least the new movie does not take place in WWII, as some of Rathbone's movies. :)
Wife dragged me to see "It's Complicated" in Manhattan Sunday. I should've bought her that diamond necklace she wanted for Christmas. Movie was way too long--about 2 hours too long. Luckily, a small child kept pounding the back of my theatre chair with his foot; it kept me awake. Not sure if the "R" rating was for the pot smoking in the film or the frightening sight of Alec Baldwin's naked body. He's actually hairier than Khalid Sheikh Mohammad.
"Jeff said...
Not sure if the "R" rating was for the pot smoking in the film or the frightening sight of Alec Baldwin's naked body. He's actually hairier than Khalid Sheikh Mohammad."
It's for the pot smoking. How 1950s prudish is that? And some of us like, and in may case prefer, our men hairy. In fact Alec Baldwin's nude scenes are the main attraction for me, as I've had a crush on him for over 20 years.
"Tomas said...
Good point. Since I haven't seen the movie yet, I don't know if it is ABOUT action. But the fact that it includes action does not separate it from the original stories.
Every ad, the trailer, and all the reviews I've read and/or seen (which at this point, is about 7or 8) are adamant that Guy RItchie has made an over-the-top action picture here, full of mind-numbing CGI effects, stunts, and action, action, action.
James Bond & Indiana Jones in London. We'll see what Ken says this evening. But it's very clear that the movie is all about action.
"Tomas said...
I don't know, but at least the new movie does not take place in WWII, as some of Rathbone's movies. :)
After doing two superb Holmes films for 20th Century Fox, Rathbone and his Holmes series moved to Universal, where they did the 1940s version of what Ritchie has done, warping the character to fit what the studio perceived as what the audience would want, in that case, making him contemporary, fighting Nazis in a retarded hairstyle, while dumbing down Nigel Bruce's Watson even more. Most of the Universal Rathbone Holmes films are mediocre at best. I'm no fan of the Holmes films he made at Universal. I love the two he did at Fox, even though they made his actually rather small, slightly shabby Baker Street digs into an apartment so huge and lavish, you wonder when the Royal Family moved out.
I would not automatically dismiss a film for contradicting the canon, if it's done wittily, and stays true to the characters. The Seven-Percent Solution was tremendously revisionist, but done with high wit, and I loved it. (Although I will never understand casting poor Robert Duvall as Watson. His accent was horribly embarrassing. Great actor spectacularly miscast.)
I read a novel some years back titled The Last Sherlock Holmes Story in which, in investigating the Jack-the-Ripper murders with Holmes, Watson discovers that Holmes is Jack-the-Ripper, but has no idea that he is, as it's a second personality that his mind created to provide himself with a challenge he couldn't solve, and also the result of the years of cocaine abuse, coupled with the curdling of his misogyny. You can't get much more revisionist than that, and reviews of it were scathing, the critics clearly offended by the whole notion, whereas I found it smart, clever, lucid, believable, and quite entertaining.
There's a novel out now, titled A Slight Trick of the Mind which sits here in my to-be-read book stack about a very elderly Sherlock Holmes in 1946, dealing with the aftermath of Hiroshima & Nagasaki, while also facing the onset of Alzheimer's. It's a very serious, somber work which has received a pile of glowing reviews, and I am eagerly anticipating getting to it once I finish Stephen King's monstrously huge Under the Dome. I have no objection to taking liberties that ring true to the character. I do object to making an Indiana Jones-in-Victorian-London movie, and calling it "Sherlock Holmes."
"Jeff said...
Not sure if the "R" rating was for the pot smoking in the film or the frightening sight of Alec Baldwin's naked body. He's actually hairier than Khalid Sheikh Mohammad."
"D. McEwan said...
It's for the pot smoking. How 1950s prudish is that? And some of us like, and in may case prefer, our men hairy. In fact Alec Baldwin's nude scenes are the main attraction for me, as I've had a crush on him for over 20 years."
D., you must REALLY like Robin Williams? Happy new year!
Sadly, I have seen the Yu-gi-oh movie. Parental responsibility to at least occasionally indulge the young'uns in stuff you know is fecal. You know how irritating it is when someone takes a cell phone call in a movie? Well the woman behind me spent half an hour on a phone call in some Eastern European language that I didn't understand a word of. And it was still the most entertaining thing about going to that film.
Reporting back after seeing It's Complicated. Hand to God, I laughed my ass off. And there wasn't a single menopause joke.
My mom LOVED It's Complicated. But then she has a thing for Alec Baldwin. My dad just enjoyed getting to see some grownup actors on screen for a change.
I guess they're the audience for it!
Doug, I hope you're not serious about Watson and Holmes being lovers. Don't let all those "Dear fellow" remarks fool you. All British men sounded gay back then.
"The Fountainhead" was ambitious enough that I can forgive it its flaws (one also has to admire Aronosfky for his sheer persistence in making it after Pitt dropped out.)
"Monkeybone," from Henry Selick & Sam Hamm, is bizarrely funny, so I have to disagree with their inclusions here.
Everything else sounds about right.
Jeff said...
D., you must REALLY like Robin Williams? Happy new year!
Doesn't mean I'm automatically attracted to any and all hairy men. There's face and build to be considered. I used to work with Robin onstage 30 years ago. I liked him a lot as a person, but trust me, zero sexual attraction to Robin. And yes, his fur was his closest-to-attractive physical feature. Happy arbitrarily chosen point in the earth's orbit of the sun to you too.
Cap'n Bob Napier said...
Doug, I hope you're not serious about Watson and Holmes being lovers. Don't let all those "Dear fellow" remarks fool you. All British men sounded gay back then.
Cap'n Bob, I remain firm in my opinion that Holmes was gay. Watson was certainly a straight man. He married twice, but I ask you, why did Holmes, an adamant woman-loather (who, despite the desperate imaginings of those who must believe Holmes straight, showed only professional respect, with no trace of sexual attraction, to Irene Adler) maintain than bond with Watson, a man not anywhere near his intellectual equal? It requires no stretch at all to see that Holmes carried an unrequited torch for Watson all his life. Billy Wilder dared to raise the issue, only to attempt refutation of it, but he had to create a non-canonical romance to do it. And one in which Mycroft was also non-canonically portrayed as thin and active (and hostile towards his brother), when in all the stories in which he apears (two) was obese, sedentary, and fond of his brother. (Wilder also presents Holmes as bungling the case quite badly, but there is precedent for that in the Canon. See The Adventure of the Yellow Face.)
In 1972 I performed a parody Sherlock Holmes piece I had written at a banquet for the Los Angeles chapter (at that time) of The Sherlock Holmes Society, in which, among other things, I presented Holmes seducing Watson when he retreated to Baker Street after a fight with his latest wife. I also postulated a friendship between Holmes and Oscar Wilde. It went over quite well, got all its laughs, and I was invited back the next two consecutive years to present further pieces (which continued developing along these lines). But there was an exception. John Ball, the author of In the Heat of the Night, was highly offended, and refused to speak to me ever afterwards. I was informed that he introduced a motion at their next board meeting to have me barred from being asked back, but was unanimously overuled. He was colder than the planet Neptune to me at each subsequent banquet. I found it amusing that a man famed for writing a mystery which became a touchstone for racial tolerance was, himself, such a homophobic bigot.
Yes, "All British men sounded gay back then." They still do. And you know what? A lot of them! are
?GregM said...
"The Fountainhead" was ambitious enough that I can forgive it its flaws (one also has to admire Aronosfky for his sheer persistence in making it after Pitt dropped out.)"
What film are you talking about? The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand's horrifically terrible, revolting jerimiad of a novel, was made by King Vidor into a laughably wretched movie starring Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal over 60 years ago. Brad Pitt wasn't born yet. No one has, to my knowledge, remade it. What a ghastly thought. Once was twice too many times as it was.
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